Resumen de Experimental and numerical investigation on TRM reinforced masonry vaults subjected to monotonical vertical settlements
Elisa Bertolesi, Manuel Buitrago Moreno, Benjamín Torres Górriz, Pedro Antonio Calderón García, José Miguel Adam Martínez, Juan José Moragues Terrades
The present work is aimed at studying the efficiency of Textile Reinforced Mortar materials (TRM) for repairing ancient curved structures. To this scope, a timbrel masonry cross vault was constructed and tested at the ICITECH laboratories of the Universitat Politècnica de Valencia (Spain). The experimental investigation comprised the testing of the vault and its following repairing by means of TRM materials During the first test, the collapse was characterized by the formation of a deep crack along the elliptic diagonal arch connecting two opposite supports. The TRM strengthening comprised an extrados layer composed by a 25x25 mm glass grid embedded into two approximately 5 mm thick layers of a mortar matrix. A direct comparison of the experimental results obtained showed the positive effect of the TRM strengthening on the global structural behaviour of the vault. The TRM strengthening was able to increase the peak loads and prevent the formation of cracks along the extrados surface of the structure. Also, a 3D macro-modelling FE strategy was adopted to study the behaviour of the structure during the tests. The models were developed by means of the FE commercial software Abaqus. The masonry support as well as the TRM retrofitting were simulated by means of shell elements. Finally a satisfactory agreement was obtained between the experimental and the numerical results.
